My Sisters Keeper

- Picoult, J. (2005). My sisters keeper. (p. 448). New York: Washington Square Press ISBN: 0743454529

- My Sisters Keep was written by Jodi Picoult and received the 2005 Alex Award for young adults. The story is about two sisters, Anna and Kate. Kate suffers from a bone marrow cancer and Anna was born to help save Kate’s life. It comes time for Anna to donate one of kidneys to Kate and the doctor says that the surgeries are dangerous and they may not even work once they are done. Anna decides to not donate a kidney to Kate and her mother goes to court over the situation. Things get very tense and Anna moves in with her father to prevent contact with her mother. A trial occurs to see if the mother has permission to make Anna donate the kidney to Kate and it come out that Kate told Anna to deny the donation because she thinks she will die anyway. Kate ends up getting the kidney because Anna is brain dead from a car accident and remains living her life to the fullest.

- I really enjoyed this book because it was great story of a sister’s love for each other. These sisters truly love each other and they listen to what the other one requests of them. I know it had to be hard for Anna, but she went through all the trouble because her sister, Kate, wanted her to. It was very sad at the end because I wanted both of them to enjoy their life together and they did not get to do so.

- Curriculum Connection: CCR: 9th and 10th grade CCR: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
It is important for the readers to determine the central idea of this text and to see how the development of the central idea occurs throughout the text.

- Genre: Drama

- Strategy 17- Text Structure Strategy: Using Graphic Organizers to Learn from Informational Text could be used when reading My Sisters Keep. It is important for students to use graphic organizers to organize the information given in the text.

Give the students a graphic organizer to fill out as they are reading the text. The first box of the graphic organizer is Event or Issue and for this book it would be Kate needs a kidney. The next box would be the first thing that occurs in the book relating to the issue, then the second thing, the third thing, and the solution on the bottom box to tell how the issue was resolved. This will allow the students to keep up with the issue occurring in the story. This will help them determine the central idea of the text by recalling the important events.